BOKU NO CHIKYUU WO MAMOTTE

DESCRIPTION

CAST

CHAPTERS

OVA DramaBoku no Chikyuu wo Mamotte
MANGA ComedyBoku no Chikyuu wo Mamotte Tribute
MANGA ComedyGuuzen ga Nokosu Mono - Kioku Senmei II
MANGA DramaBoku wo Tsutsumu Tsuki no Hikari: BokuTama Jisedai-hen

REVIEWS

• 

  Pockeyramune919

  60/100
  Heart and beauty just barely save this manga from the absolutely hellish messages it pushes.

  Trigger warning for sexual assault
  This review contains spoilers for Please Save My Earth

  

  In my reviews, I usually write out an animanga's synopsis in my own words, but sometimes you've got to let the existing description speak for itself.

  Life's hard when you're shy, harder still when you move from your quiet hometown to the bustle of a big city and a new high school. Poor Alice also has to cope with being regularly harassed by the bratty neighbor boy, Rin. Her life turns upside-down when she's stuck babysitting Rin and the annoying chore ends in unexpected tragedy. What Alice doesn't realize is there could be a greater force at work than unhappy chance!

  In and of itself, this doesn't sound that notable. My intrigue really started once I looked at the genres: drama, fantasy, sci-fi, and romance. Some of the tags include Space, Reincarnation, and Super Power. Then there was the obvious fact that it's named Please Save my Earth and its cover image features protagonist Alice Sakaguchi resting protectively against the planet. In a status post, I wrote, "you're really going to make me read this, huh?" And how could I not? I wanted to see how these parts worked together. I wanted to see if it was really as ambitious as it seemed.

  Please Save My Earth is far, far, far from a perfect manga. It's flawed — supremely, tragically, and even insidiously so. Yet I can't say it fell short of its ambition. Sure, the plane might have left a smoke trail in its wake due to a terrible engine fire, but it flew high throughout. When I started reading, I expected this to end up being one of my favorite manga and I can still see why I thought that.

  Part of this is thanks to the intrigue that Please Save My Earth fosters. It's not just intriguing in its mysterious premise, but in its execution as well. A large portion of Please Save My Earth's plot is driven by mystery — cliffhangers, shocking swerves, murky motives, unknown identities, and subterfuge is the name of the game here. To understand how mystery energizes the story, you need to know a crucial plot point that's left out of the synopsis — Alice's classmates, Jinpei and Issei have dreams they share of past lives on a moonbase — with Jinpei being a man named Gyokuran and Issei being a woman named Enju. They are certain that they are their reincarnations, and that the four other members of the team have also been reincarnated and are somewhere out there. And by the end of the first volume, it is revealed that Alice is the reincarnation of a woman named Mokuren.

  The topic of reincarnation drives Please Save My Earth forward and is the basis of nearly all of the mystery. Who and where are the rest of the reincarnates? For a number of chapters, we don't even know what all of the residents of the moonbase look like. Most of the story takes place in the present day, so we're left wanting to see what life on the moonbase is like. When Rin develops psychic powers, we're left wondering if it has anything to do with reincarnation. Once a reincarnate lies about who they are, we're left wondering how long will it take for the others to find out. In the same vein, a shady character will profess their goal to be one thing but we're left to question what they're really after. For most of the story, Alice doesn't have many memories of Mokuren; when will she remember? When she starts to, how will she cope with memories of Mokuren's trauma?

  I could go on and on, but the bottom line is that the mysteries of Please Save My Earth make it a very engaging read, moreso than any manga I've read before. I was consistently on the edge of my seat, turning pages quickly so I could see what happens next. Saki Hiwatari is a maestro when it comes to pacing. There's never a dull moment when reading Please Save My Earth.

  Oh, sure, there are lull moments (after all, if you're foot's always slamming the gas, it stops feeling fast), but they never feel *dull thanks to the characters.

  Whether you argue that the characters themselves are complex or that the situation they find themselves in is complex, the end result is the same — you can't help but care about what happens to these people. Like the plot, the struggles the characters find themselves in are quite engaging. At first glance, reincarnation seems pretty divorced from "objective" reality, and as a topic of discussion, it doesn't seem to have that many practical applications. The more you read, the more false this becomes. Please Save My Earth asks questions regarding sins of the past, present penance, the capacity to look to the future while chained by memories. Then there's just the fact that the characters must struggle with reconciling past feelings with present selves. Take Issei for example, who was a woman in love with Gyokuran in his past life. In the present, Gyokuran has reincarnated as Jinpachi. Due to this, Issei must deal with burgeoning feelings of homosexuality, feelings that Issei doesn't want to have. As much as I enjoy the characters, they can fall flat. Issei's dilemma is felt fresh and modern but the "solution" to it is anything but. Issei ultimately is able to move past his feelings for his friend and get into a relationship with a woman. And it feels odd because, yeah, this is reincarnation and it's not technically the same thing as being actually gay, but that requires selectively ignoring applicability. I don't want to delve too deeply into the negatives just yet, however. The final positive thing I'll say about the characters is that I enjoyed how Hiwatari employed an ensemble cast. Alice and Mokuren (and to a lesser extent, Shion) are ostensibly the faces of the manga, but the former is so mousey and the latter so mysterious that to forward the plot and character studies, the rest of the cast must be utilized, making this story feel more alive than it would if we just focused on Alice. In fact, come the end of the story, I think Please Save My Earth is better when it doesn't focus on Alice. But I digress.

  

  Another big strength of Please Save My Earth is a pretty nebulous one. Mystery doesn't just drive the plot and pacing, but it breathes life into the very setting, there is an air of mystery. There's an undeniable V★I★B★E to Please Save My Earth that's hard to put into words. There's a feeling of melancholy — from country girl Alice having to move to the big city, to the knowledge that the characters are experiencing the lives of people long dead. Yet, there's a feeling of sweetness, too — from the romance to the whimsy that comes from discovering the characters have psychic powers. There's a sense of anemoia that draws me into Please Save My Earth. There's a certain beauty to the manga, a beauty that inspired the view of Earth from Sonic Adventure 2's Space Colony Arc. Things will certainly go way downhill, but it's clear that Please Save My Earth has real heart, even if it can be horribly misplaced.

  The art is quite good. Hiwatari is really good at making art that's emotional and beautiful, yet not shying away from comedic expressions from time to time. I won't say that Please Save my Earth is ever a hoot, but it can be pretty funny at times. Interestingly, enough, I could see Hiwatari change her story to complement her artistic shortcomings. There's a fight scene early on. While it's a serious fight, the scuffle is rendered via a cartoony cloud of dust. Later on, we go full-on Akira as characters beginning duking it out via psychic powers and I can't help but wonder if it was because Hiwatari can't draw traditional fights well. Either way, it's neat.

  But not all that glitters is gold. The characters, one of Please Save My Earth's greatest strengths, end up being its greatest weakness. The aces up Hiwatari's sleeve are Rin, Shion, Alice, and Mokuren. Unfortunately, they end up being what costs her the game.

  

  Rin is where things start unraveling at the seams. He's a 7-year-old pining for the 14-year-old Alice, going so far as to steal her first kiss and proclaim she's his fiance (which she goes along with because she's a doormat (and I say this with pity, not derision)). This is weird and, trust me, we'll get back to it, but this is just how a spoiled brat of a kid would act, fine. Then he gets psychic powers and is revealed to be Shion. What proceeds are volumes upon volumes of wheeling and dealing, lying about his identity, blackmail, and a complete disregard for the sanctity of human lives. I'm down for violence in media (if I wasn't, I wouldn't have some of the favorites that I do), but it feels distinctly wrong when we have this brat who's trying to murder people for possibly interfering with his EviL pLaNs in a fairly normal setting where people are just trying to live their lives. And I just hate how smug the little fucker is. I really do not understand how this kid has so many fans, but I admit that just boils down to opinion. And whether or not I like him, I certainly empathize with him. He's a kid torn between two worlds, stuck in the past. While he could garner sympathy, he still felt like a rabid dog that needed to be put down due to the danger he was causing others. He then goes into a coma and we get an extended flashback of his past life, as Shion. The function of this segment is clear — we'll see who he was before to sympathize with him further.

  This fails.

  Spectacularly.

  

  If Rin is where Please Save My Earth begins to unravel, Shion is where it completely falls apart.

  The first thing you must know about Shion is that his life is Tragic™. Tragic every step of the way. The type of tragic that can either be genuinely heartbreaking, hilarious, or overwrought, depending on the writer. Hiwatari, fortunately, can elicit genuine pity. He’s a very sympathetic character.

  The second thing you must know about Shion is that he is an asshole. A very unrepentant asshole, at that. He's sarcastic and surly. He always sees the bad in people, even if he has to make it up. He uses others as tools. He is a very unlikable character despite being able to understand him. And that's fine.

  The problem, however, is that Please Save My Earth seems to say that since he's had a Tragic™ life, it's okay for Shion to be an asshole and he's given carte blanche to be a piece of shit to everyone he meets without the story really calling him out on it. Au, contraire, most characters (or at least the ones we're supposed to sympathize with) bend over backward to justify and excuse his bad behavior. His verbal abuse is just him "keeping it real." Him being an antisocial gremlin is just him "not liking phonies." If a character does call him out, the story will make sure to have another character talk about how horrible the first character is, essentially rushing to Shion's defense. It makes it so Shion is excused for heinous behavior. Said heinous behavior is what breaks the story.

  It's here where that trigger warning at the beginning of the review comes into play.

  Shion rapes Mokuren.

  This is something that's very explicitly stated. It's not pussyfooted around as some other works do. No, the manga goes out of its way to very specifically use the word "rape." As part of her being a class of psychic called a "Kiche," Mokuren has a bindi-like mark that (apparently) disappears upon getting into a relationship or having sex. It doesn’t disappear, meaning that we could have had it revealed that Shion didn’t have sex with her, but no, the story goes out of its way to say that they did have sex and yet it remains. All this is to say that this was a very conscious decision on Hiwatari's part; she believed this to be necessary for the manga.

  And to be fair, it's handled better than it could have been. I stand by not wanting rape scenes in stories, but if you feel you have to have one, this is probably how you do it. It's graphic enough to make your stomach turn without showing anything, framed in a way that isn't at all meant to be sexy. Mokuren screams "no" and "stop," making it clear that she doesn't want this, making it clear that Shion is wrong. When the deed is done, Mokuren feels horrible, she's despondent and sick in bed for days. The rest of Mokuren's crew are disgusted with Shion. The event doesn't go away and its dark echo persists throughout the story. When Alice remembers this event in Mokuren's life, she vomits and is horrified. It's treated with the somber gravitas it deserves. If nothing else, Hawatari excelled at showing how horrible the act of rape is…

  ...before completely fucking butchering the effects of such a heinous act. Because after the fact, Mokuren forgives Shion and they become a couple. And not as in we get a deep dive into the psychology of a woman broken by a heinous act. No, we get a pretty bog-standard romance out of a rapist and his victim.

  

  I’m not someone who thinks a rapist can be redeemed. A story about a rapist being redeemed or forgiven would be hard enough for me to swallow, but the way to do it absolutely is not by attaching a romance to it. In doing so, it goes a step beyond redemption, it goes a step beyond forgiveness. It morphs into rewarding the rapist and it makes Please Save My Earth stomach-turning.

  The kicker is that it doesn't only destroy Shion's character, but it hurts my enjoyment of Mokuren's as well. Her life ends up being a lot more tragic than Hiwatari intended. Shion uses her as a tool to get back at his rival, Gyokuren, whom he knows is in love with Mokuren. There was an honest-to-God moment wherein it seemed like Hiwatari was acknowledging how fucked up this was. There's a moment where Alice says that Shion didn't love Mokuren. Yet we cannot even have this much ambiguity; instead, the story rushes to Shion's defense once again, telling us that Shion did love Mokuren and she loved him back, telling us that he raped her because he loved her. The story could have presented a toxic relationship and the dangers from it, but no, it’s framed as being romantic.

  This is all very uncomfortable. Shion's a very toxic and terrible person yet he’s rewarded for it. There is a criticism of certain relationship archetypes, one in which a plucky, emotionally-available woman "fixes” a brooding guy. Mokuren and Shion are Exhibit A of how toxic, unbalanced, and sinister this dynamic can be if done poorly.

  As an adult, I'm mature enough to navigate this unhealthy relationship, but I fantasize about having kids one day and I wouldn’t want an impressionable child reading this. It could lead them down a bad path and give them heartbreaking, disturbing views of relationships. Warped views of entitlement and self-worth.

  Oh, and don't worry if you thought the characters from the present would save you from uncomfortable relationships. Alice gets with Ren at the end of the story, yes, the child seven years her junior. In the sequel series, she conceives a child with him when he's 15 and she's 22.

  I felt sick by the end of reading this.

  The one saving grace is that, for all the pomp and circumstance they were given, we really don’t see much of Shion and Mokuren as a couple. Normally, this would be a bad thing, but given the circumstances of their relationship, if I was subjected to pages upon pages of the mangaka writing them to be lovey-dovey, I’d actually spew chunks.

  

  All that said, I can't write off Please Save My Earth entirely. Past the more heinous parts, it still remains the most engaging manga I've read. There's some great skill on display here and it's hard to not be dazzled. Please Save My Earth has substantial strengths through a gripping story, an intriguing setting, and compelling characters. Unlike the last Problematic™ animanga I reviewed, it's more than its worst element, the bad doesn't quite outweigh the good, and there's genuine heart here.

  Yet that heart ends up being a double-edged sword. Because that earnestness, that positivity makes the sexual assault aspect all the more insidious.

  Because for all its downsides there's a certain shield that irreverence brings. While it's certainly disrespectful to treat certain things as a joke, it still tends to absolve one of certain scrutiny. In a perfect world, I'd have to deal with neither, but ultimately, I think it's easier to swallow a work tastelessly joking about sexual assault than a work championing it as being the first step to a loving relationship. The former is annoying, the latter is terrifying.

  Please Save My Earth has enough going for it that I can't really say it failed to be entertaining. For most of its run, Please Save My Earth truly is a sight to behold. Yet the way rape is handled in the story casts a storm cloud over the entire work, leaving a rancid taste in my mouth. It gets a passing score, but just barely. It's really a testament to just how good the rest of the story is. I'm wary about recommending this — if you want a unique sci-fi with a rich plot and a lot of heart, perhaps you should give Please Save My Earth a shot. But if your stomach turns at the thought of that same heart being used to justify rape then steer very clear.

  
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